Logies 2017: Jessica Marais the only woman to make the cut for TV's biggest award

Six television personalities have been nominated for the TV Week Gold Logie, a popularly voted award which remains the highest accolade in Australian television.

But at a time when such metrics are scrutinised heavily, it will not pass without notice that only one of the six is a woman.

Jessica Marais in The Wrong Girl.Credit:Network Ten

Jessica Marais, who stars in the Nine Network drama Love Child and the Ten Network drama The Wrong Girl, is the sole female nominee for the Gold Logie this year.

Though women dominate the covers and coverage of the magazine which owns the awards, TV Week, they are yet to secure firm ground at the pointy end of the awards.

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Samuel Johnson, who played Molly Meldrum in Molly.Credit:Mark Metcalfe

Nor have they fared well in historical terms; the Gold Logie has been awarded to a woman only 23 times since the awards were created in 1960 and only two women have been admitted to the Logie Hall of Fame since it was created in 1984.

The second of those, Noni Hazlehurst, only received the honour last year.

The other five nominees for this year's Gold Logie are game show host Grant Denyer, actors Rodger Corser and Samuel Johnson, and two of the panellists on The Project, Peter Helliar and Waleed Aly.

Aly was last year's winner.

Conspicuous by their absence are Aly's co-host on The Project, Carrie Bickmore, who has been nominated for the last five years and won in 2015, and last year's two other female nominees, actress Essie Davis and news presenter Lee Lin Chin.

Foxtel's drama slate heads the Logies charge, scoring nominations for drama series A Place to Call Home and Wentworth, and miniseries Secret City and The Kettering Incident.

Fairfax Media journalist reporter Adele Ferguson has also been nominated for the the Four Corners report 'Money For Nothing', which investigated the insurance arm of the Commonwealth Bank, CommInsure.

Ferguson was previously nominated, and won, for another Four Corners report, 'Banking Bad', which blew the lid off the "profit at all cost" culture within the banking industry.

'Banking Bad' also won the Gold Quill Award, the Gold Walkley Award and the Gold Kennedy Award.

Roughly half of the awards are jury-voted "outstanding" awards which recognise excellence in series, miniseries, performance and program genres, including entertainment, comedy, children's television, news coverage and sport.

The remainder are awarded to the most popular programs – confusingly named "best" categories – based on audience voting; voting closed for those categories in December.

The 59th annual TV Week Logie Awards will be held on April 23 in Melbourne and aired on the Nine Network.